


close your eyes and I'll (not) kiss you

by ElasticElla



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Internalized Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-06
Updated: 2017-01-06
Packaged: 2018-09-15 04:42:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9219449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElasticElla/pseuds/ElasticElla
Summary: Jocelyn wasn't supposed to come back. She wasn't supposed to leave either, but the important part was she wasn't supposed to come back.





	

**Author's Note:**

> since i did super angsty jocelyn/maryse for the first round of the ficathon, here's attempt #2 for round 2
> 
> ([go leave and/or fill promopts \o/](http://ladygawain.livejournal.com/83816.html))

Jocelyn wasn't supposed to come back. She wasn't supposed to leave either, but the important part was she wasn't supposed to come back. 

She'd left Maryse alone to deal with Valentine and the inner circle and the Clave breathing down their necks. And god, all Maryse wanted was to protect her children and- the rest didn't matter. The rest was superfluous. Then and now.

Her marriage was still a wreck, Robert barely made any effort to help their kids- he never was one for the long game. He dotted upon Izzy like he couldn't see how he was weakening her, encouraging her to act out and drag her prospects through the mud. Maryse had married him for his name and that was all she ever got out of him. 

For the past eighteen years, Maryse had thought her dead. For no one had helped her, no warlock could find her, and then her daughter shows up demanding their aid. And then Jocelyn shows up with a werewolf at her side. (It only stings more that he was once a shadowhunter, that his story isn't pitiful but romantically tragic.)

Jocelyn wasn't supposed to see her like this. All steel and no bend, devoted to nothing but her children's success. (And if Jace was truly hers, if he'd been Jocelyn's this whole time. It turns their once playful rivalry bitter, that Jocelyn should out spar her is one thing. But her _son_ beat _Alec_?)

Maryse chose love. Twice. 

Running through Idris with Jocelyn, their hair streaming in the wind, agility runes practically glowing. Ending up exhausted in a stretch of grass that looks almost like a faerie glenn, sprawled out below the sun, fresh green stains all over their training wear. 

“It'll always be us,” Jocelyn had said, no smile all intensity. 

And Maryse was weak then, passion ruling her. 

“I promise,” Maryse says, and they kiss and kiss, birds circling above. 

The promise doesn't last. Jocelyn breaks it first, with a Morgenstern. And full of spite, Maryse picks out a Lightwood. He isn't cold, but she is numb to him anyways. Cares nothing but for their future, that has to matter. (Maryse didn't want to join the Circle- for selfish reasons sure, but she still lays the blame at Robert's feet.)

Robert has other women, Maryse only has one. 

She tries love again, a decade after Jocelyn disappears. Isabelle wanted to learn piano, one of the very few ladylike activities she was interested in. So Maryse doesn't mention the mundane factor, doesn't complain about her instructor being a thirty minute commute each way. 

It doesn't hurt that the woman is beautiful, or talented, or enchanting, or makes Maryse feel like she's a person again not just a set of objectives. Her name is Genesis, at the time she finds it fitting. A new start to living again, a blank slate to be anyone. They kiss, and it tastes like a half-forgotten melody, familiar and haunting.

Genesis starts mixing snack time with practice time, and somehow the three of them are dining together after Izzy's little performance. Maryse doesn't want to remember the last time she was this happy, living for every Monday evening. 

It works until it doesn't, Isabelle talking too much about the really nice lady that teaches her piano. And then it's over, but she finds herself dreaming of Jocelyn. It's over and she feels like she cheated on a memory, on a ghost, and she forces herself to become steel once more. Izzy and Alec and Jace. They were the future, her legacy, her family. And they were going to have far more than she ever did, they would have the world. 

Maryse knows life is made up of hard choices, sprinkled with easier ones to throw you off. She's only chosen wrong twice.


End file.
